OpenStack Neutron Set for New Updates in Juno Release

October OpenStack release will be a major milestone for cloud networking.

CHICAGO - Mark McClain and Kyle Mestery have some news for networking professionals: OpenStack Juno is going to be a big release. McClain currently works for Yahoo, Mestery at Cisco, and both men are actively involved in leading the OpenStack Neutron networking project. In a presentation at the LinuxCon/Cloud Open conference, McClain and Mestery detailed what's coming for networking in OpenStack.

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The next major release of the open source OpenStack cloud platform is named Juno and is set to debut in October. Among the big items that will land in the release is more complete IPv6 networking support.

McClain noted that IPv6 has been a development focus for the last few cycles of OpenStack Neutron development. Both stateful and stateless DHCP will be supported in OpenStack Neutron's IPv6 support for the Juno release.

Beyond IPv6 support, Neutron will get a new feature called Distributed Virtual Routing (DVR). Mestery explained that prior to the Juno release, one router could not easily span more than a single network node. DVR solves that problem.

With DVR, routing is placed on the hypervisors themselves, removing a potential single point of failure in an OpenStack Neutron deployment. DVR also offers the promise of getting higher bandwidth.

The OpenStack Neutron project got started back in 2011. Since the project's first release, networking within OpenStack has also been enabled via the Nova network modules. At this point, Neutron is a stable and mature codebase, and there is a plan in Juno to help enable easier Nova network to Neutron migration.

McClain said that there are multiple migration paths that can be taken, and the project will provide a number of options.

Not everyone is thrilled with Neutron. In an interview earlier this year, OpenStack vendor Nebula told Enterprise Networking Planet that they would be sticking with Nova networking.

Another element that is now being added to the Neutron project is an incubator effort to develop new features.

Mestery said that in the past, new features were hashed out at OpenStack developer summits, but that model doesn't always work. The new incubator enables new features to gestate and develop. The plan is that incubator features only stay in the incubator for two release cycles or fewer before they potentially graduate to a full feature within Neutron.

Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at Enterprise Networking Planet and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.

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